You say of the specific pleasure in the infliction of pain: "it's a common-or-garden cruelty" Where I've found actual sadism quite rare, and terrifying.
You say of the use of others as objects: "That is the face of evil in our own times."
So it didn't seem to me that you were saying one was no less real, it seemed that the point was that the latter is more real. I don't see why there needs to be a comparison. They're both happening, and haven't they both happened all the time? Slavery's been with us since...we wanted a chestnut, and not to get burned. Sadism has happened for just as long a time. Each is a potential with the kind of brain we have.
The argument that sadism is better because it implicitly acknowledges one's humanity has been put about before (it's Foucault's argument about punishment and the state, I think). I'm never sure about the value of the comparisons.
no subject
Where I've found actual sadism quite rare, and terrifying.
You say of the use of others as objects: "That is the face of evil in our own times."
So it didn't seem to me that you were saying one was no less real, it seemed that the point was that the latter is more real. I don't see why there needs to be a comparison. They're both happening, and haven't they both happened all the time? Slavery's been with us since...we wanted a chestnut, and not to get burned. Sadism has happened for just as long a time. Each is a potential with the kind of brain we have.
The argument that sadism is better because it implicitly acknowledges one's humanity has been put about before (it's Foucault's argument about punishment and the state, I think). I'm never sure about the value of the comparisons.